Character as Worldbuilding

Back in 2025 at the Sandia Starforgers Writer's Retreat, the entire weekend was spent on worldbuilding. The previous posts focused on the Fashion of Worldbuilding as detailed by Mary Robinette Kowal in her class for the retreat. One of the other instructors was Rebecca Roanhorse. Rebecca’s class was called Character as Worldbuilding and focused on how character is critical to providing the emotional story and plot for your book. You might think this is obvious, but sometimes a story idea is developed first, and then a character is created to fit the story. But understanding the character first can inform you about what the conflict of the story is going to be, and conflict is related to plot. One of the ideas that Rebecca stressed was the idea of story versus plot, where plot is the physical actions taken by the character while story is the emotional arc of the character.

While our stories haven’t followed all of Rebecca’s (excellent) advice, we have considered who our characters are, and what their motivations, flaws, and needs are in developing our stories.

In our upcoming novella, Unspeakable, the main character is someone we met briefly in the Saul Imbierowicz vampire trilogy – Joe Klein. Joe reveals to Saul (in our second book, Untouchable) that he is also a vampire and while Saul wants Joe’s help to take on Al Capone, Joe refuses. Joe's story comes about because we had a character that we met in the trilogy, and we wanted to know more about him. So, Unspeakable explores the events of how Jozef (as he’s known in the book) becomes a vampire.

When we meet Jozef, he is on a hunt to bring back a deer for a family event to celebrate the baptism of Jozef’s nephew. This highlights one of his motivations – helping his family. But it also touches on a flaw for Jozef – the love he has for his family. His family is very important to him, and this is one of the driving forces behind the decisions he makes. This motivation and flaw help us to determine the arc of the story and the journey that Jozef will take as the plot unfolds. The plot might work on its own, but without the emotional connection that Jozef has, there is no conflict in the story, and no change for Jozef to go through.

In our recently released novella, Dr. Gnoll, we again started with the main character, Flint Dagger. However, the motivation for the character and the story are different. In this case, Flint is an amalgamation of the many tropes and characters that are found in the spy thriller genre. He has his motivations and flaws, but these don’t necessarily inform the story. The plot is intended to be light and is, by design, built on a house of tropes because the story is a vehicle for parody. Flint is, in many ways, a living stereotype, though we take pains to both expand upon the stereotype and to circumvent the stereotypes when we can. Regardless, Flint is a character that goes against the advice that Rebecca gave in her class. In a way, Flint is just along for the ride, although we don’t think that this detracts from the story because we are purposely trying to poke at the fantasy and spy thriller tropes.

What we like about rules on writing is that they can be broken from time to time. Understanding the rules can provide you with guidance and can help shape a character and the story you want to tell. But at times, the story you want to tell may dictate what and how you write, and the character’s motivations and flaws are less important to telling that particular story.